11:53 AM
This essay is an analytical reading on Mark Liechty’s book Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society. The essay introduces Liechty’s main objective, his anthropological and theoretical arguments applied to explain class and the process of middle-class formation in urban Kathmandu, Nepal. Liechty’s concepts are discussed with some comparison to Bourdieu’s and Koo’s ideas in the case of South Korean workers’ class formation where it is thought to be relevant, especially at the end of this essay.
Using ethnographic data, Liechty’s work seeks to theorize the middle-class formation in Nepal by providing deep insight into the experience of modernity on the urban Kathmandu; that is he describes as an experience of modernity on the third world periphery. While working class formation in South Korea was triggered by the unprecedented export-oriented industrialization and political change, the unprecedented movements of goods, ideas and people had facilitated the middle-class formation in Kathmandu where power embodied in the global modernity and the local tradition caused cultural tension. In this conflictual relation, cultural class trilogy of consumerism, commercial mediation, and the youth become mutually constitutive to give rise to the making of cultural space for the groups of people who will represent themselves as the middle-class through ever-ending processes. Liechty argues that, it is the process performed through class practices, i.e. production of cultural space, not the product, which constitutes class.
Liechty begins his work by locating Marx and Weber in the anthropology of cultural class studies in order to be able to utilize both theorists’ legacy in the current context of middle class formation in Kathmandu and elsewhere (Liechty, 2003, p. 6) . He argues that class becomes very important as a framing paradigm for many people as money and market economy become socially dominant imperatives by subordinating the initial social valence of caste in Kathmandu. Thus, it is required to established explicit cultural class theory to increase the probability of having culturally objective sense of middle-class formation in Kathmandu.
Bearing in mind the problem of the myths of classness and of class in anthropological literature, he suggests that Marx’s and Weber’s theories can be converged and be complementary each other as long as both are contextually located in each of their historical moments in the initial course of European capitalist development. As Marx recognizes the link between economic status (class) and ideology (culture), Weber takes this link further as he argues that social status is not only determined by class position, but also by cultural status. Class is a function of a person’s or group’s position in the capitalist market, both in terms of relations of production and in terms of ability to consume goods and services in the market. On the other hand, social status is about a person’s or group’s lifestyle, education, training, socialization, and prestige. These resources mutually contribute to the gaining of cultural status where middle classes have ambiguous position. They are “one step removed from the productive processes of capital” (Liechty, 2003, p. 15) as they relate to productive processes neither as sellers of labor nor as owners of capital but as consumers of goods in the market place. This distance from mere laboring and mere wealth enables the creation of distinctive morality pursued by groups of people through their privileged access to goods and services. According to Weber, this middle class morality is related to its position within the larger class economy and its rhetoric can be used to naturalize and defend middle-class privilege. In addition, members of the middle-class live in a relatively unstable socioeconomic condition as a result of their ambiguous relationship to the productive economy.
Inspired by E.P. Thompson’s notion of class (see Thompson, 1966, p. 9), Liechty argues that class is a process, neither structure nor category, but something that has happened or happens in reality. Even though Marx and Weber theories have facilitated insights into the formation of middle-class in Kathmandu, they are still handicapped to explain middle-class formation as a cultural process where people tell and listen to stories. Therefore, Liechty adopts concepts of performativity (see Butler, 1990, p. 17) and narrativity (see Somers, 1997, p. 75) as ways of understanding the cultural processes of middle-class life in Kathmandu. In performativity perspective, class is a reality that exists only in its perpetual sociocultural enactment within a limiting matrix of intelligibility. So this perspective helps understand how people actively produce class culture consistently in a regular way through open dramaturgy and extensive mass mediation. These mass-mediated tones of dramas are created and recreated to be reality through stories told and lived by people in their daily lives in the forms of narratives. These narratives become very meaningful when they are shifted to be stories that are able to naturalize certain privileged cultural practices collectively and publicly. Through these cultural narratives, people learn who they are and who they are supposed to be. Then, the idea of narrativity comes to provide meanings on the cultural creation made through performances. These cultural meanings become more complex in the moment of global modernity where global narratives alive represented in certain values like progress, achievement, and growth and local narratives intermingle in reality with equal power of value, honor, and meaning. In this cultural situation, Kathmandu’s emerging middle class must struggle morally, materially, and ideologically to be recognized or counted by participating in producing a new culture space that has not come to reality before. In so doing, their self-consciousness is guided by the awareness of their position between high and low classes and at the same time, they are forced to pioneer a space for Nepali national identity somewhere between the global ideological poles of tradition and modernity (Liechty, 2003, p. 7).
In order to be able to explain how middle class culture is formed or how middle classes create their own culture space, Liechty introduces three very important elements of the middle class formation, i.e. consumption, mass media, and youth culture. These elements are closely related to each other under the underlying notion of commercial commodity. Class and consumption are mutually linked to form middle-class culture where people who have access to economic resources will have higher probability to “do shopping and fashion”. The act of shopping and fashioning is one moment in the processes of becoming middle class members. Middle-class membership will be determined based on the extent people share a common orientation to capitalist productive processes by becoming consumers of commodities, and on the extent they make consumption as their primary mode of cultural production. Only by this level of communality, this group of people will have ability to both include and exclude others by both displaying and concealing their class privilege through the power of commodity and their commercial practices within their cultural boundary or space. Liechty explains how shopping and fashioning performed and ideologized,
“When it comes to determining who counts and who does not, fashion is the name of the game. In the display and negotiation of status and prestige, fashion-and the consumer lifestyle generally-is the most alluring and ubiquitous contest in the city. At the most basic level, doing fashion serves as a kind of gatekeeping device for the middle class. Without certain disposable income, many in Kathmandu are unable to stake a claim to middle-class membership, because they are unable to display fashioned self (p. 140).
Liechty argues that mass media plays an important role in the lives of the middle-class in Kathmandu. He portrays this role by locating media consumption within consumer culture articulated actively in the form of commercial entertainment media consumption. Interestingly, he puts these media products in line with other consumables in order to assign them to the broader patterns of commodity promotion and consumption. Therefore, this constant media involvement in the processes of negotiating other goods results into a mutual relation where media and other goods promote each other. Middle-class consumption, according to him, is not only the act of having, but it is most importantly about middle-class production or project. When these constant processes occur on the daily basis, the middle-class performs its existence through consumer regimens. One of the ways they perform their middle-class existence is through the act of doing fashion. Liechty explains,
“For members of Kathmandu’s middle class, doing fashion is not a luxury but a necessity. Indeed, attention to, or even a preoccupation with, fashion was almost a defining feature of the middle class (p. 135). The insecurity of middle-classness breeds a kind of focused earnestness about dress and the need to boast about new acquisitions. For them, proper clothing is a big deal and constitutes an important part of their claims to membership in the urban middle class” (p. 136)
Furthermore, Liechty explains how the production of youth culture has become one of the most important elements of the middle-class production in Kathmandu. He argues “in capitalist modernity the constitution of a particular form of youth identity of youth culture has been an integral part of middle-class formation” (p. 35). According to Liechty, the role of the youth tends to be instrumental as bearers of middle-class culture as their identity always changes according to the demands of middle-class industrial and consumption orientation. From stories of the youth, Liechty explains,
“For this young man, it was fashion that simultaneously linked him to the modern world-the other big cities-and separated him from the rest of Nepal. Through fashion he could indentify both with other fashionable people in the city and with a transnational urban fashion scene. For him, fashion linked the local middle-class with a global culture of modernity” (p. 140).
“Consciously dressing to gain positive reaction of others is not a dishonest action. It is a way of encourage people to regard you with interest. It is an invitation to explore the interesting and dynamic person that is behind a well presented visual image” (p. 221).
Liechty’s book has shown how cultural practices performed and narrated overtly to form a new culture space where the middle-class have their own identity between the high and the low within the context of global modernity and local traditionality. However, he does not pay attention on the inter-class relations as much as he pays attention to the intra-class relation within middle-class members. His inclination to emphasize on intra-class relation rather than on inter-class relation, I think, has some reasons. First, fluidity and ambiguity of the middle-classness needs extra labor to draw clear lines among class categories in order to be able to show how they inter-correlate each other. Second, when class defined as a non-categorical and non-structural thing, I think, it becomes very difficult to show how they inter-correlate each other because class, then, must be understood as a continuous process where boundaries are created and recreated. Thus, streamlines between class boundaries are “unstable”. Relatively stable class boundary is necessary in order to be able to see how inter-class relations occur in a new culture space, e.g. urban Kathmandu.
From Bourdieu’s symbolic structuralist perspective, the new culture space in fact occurs from the internal tension between the global modernity and local traditionality, between the high and the low class through processes of symbolic violence. Be counted or not counted that is determined by fashion game does matter to be included or excluded from middle-class ownership. It is the violence of not being counted that motivates people to act and adopt values that are suitably modern (distinction), i.e. ability to negotiate and locate modernity and traditionality. In addition, cultural reproduction that happens through cultural practices using performances and narratives represents the way middle-classness passed on (i.e. socialization) from generation to generation where mass media and production of youth culture plays a very important role.
Comparison between the formation of Nepal middle-class and other class formations cannot be taken too far, especially when those class formations are dealt with different methods and class categories. However, qualitatively tentative comparison still makes sense to pursue for the sake of better understanding. For example, even though Liechty uses cultural processual approach that is different from the symbolic structural approach used by Koo in Korean Workers to explain the formation of working class, both studies have shown some similarities between the middle-class “performers” and the working class “fighters”. In their long-term struggles to form class identities both class actors have experienced deprivation and aggravation with different equation in terms of its character. While South Korean workers had experienced both physical and psychological violence and torture, the Nepali middle-class had experienced the hardship of imagining being in the low class characterized with vulgarity and the infeasibility of being in the high class dominated by the economic and cultural capitalist. To the Nepali middle-class actors, they had to struggle for a new culture space to be counted as the South Korean workers had to fight against the employers and state to gain social and cultural recognition. Also, both class categories had been looking for status and social recognition from others regardless of their class categories. In the case of the South Korean workers, the establishment of the working class as a class identity has not changed their collective position as workers, but it did change their social and cultural status in the eyes of people. Similar to the Nepali middle-classes, they wanted to be “counted properly” by creating a distinctive cultural space. Furthermore, class-consciousness plays very important role for both types of class formation and both require commonality. It is cultural class-consciousness that has enabled the middle-class to practice values and behaviors that they think can make them to be included and allow them to exclude others. The same thing for the working class formation in South Korea, it is class-consciousness from their existential experiences that has motivated them to organize and mobilize their power against the ruling class. Nevertheless, both class formations employ different proximity. The formation of cultural middle-class in Nepal applied cultural space (e.g. lifestyles and fashion) as their field to practice class whereas the working class in South Korea used environmental and bureaucratic space (e.g. factories, streets and unions) to practice their power against the ruling class. Finally, both class formations have used the notion of ideologization as an instrument to legitimize, naturalize, and defend their social status and position. In the case of middle-class in Nepal, they employ metanarratives or stories as a mechanism for socialization and in turn ideologization of their cultural class, whereas the South Korean workers used education and culture of han (Koo, 2001, p. 130, 136), for example, as ideological tools to develop and strengthen their struggles for class recognition.
Using ethnographic data, Liechty’s work seeks to theorize the middle-class formation in Nepal by providing deep insight into the experience of modernity on the urban Kathmandu; that is he describes as an experience of modernity on the third world periphery. While working class formation in South Korea was triggered by the unprecedented export-oriented industrialization and political change, the unprecedented movements of goods, ideas and people had facilitated the middle-class formation in Kathmandu where power embodied in the global modernity and the local tradition caused cultural tension. In this conflictual relation, cultural class trilogy of consumerism, commercial mediation, and the youth become mutually constitutive to give rise to the making of cultural space for the groups of people who will represent themselves as the middle-class through ever-ending processes. Liechty argues that, it is the process performed through class practices, i.e. production of cultural space, not the product, which constitutes class.
Liechty begins his work by locating Marx and Weber in the anthropology of cultural class studies in order to be able to utilize both theorists’ legacy in the current context of middle class formation in Kathmandu and elsewhere (Liechty, 2003, p. 6) . He argues that class becomes very important as a framing paradigm for many people as money and market economy become socially dominant imperatives by subordinating the initial social valence of caste in Kathmandu. Thus, it is required to established explicit cultural class theory to increase the probability of having culturally objective sense of middle-class formation in Kathmandu.
Bearing in mind the problem of the myths of classness and of class in anthropological literature, he suggests that Marx’s and Weber’s theories can be converged and be complementary each other as long as both are contextually located in each of their historical moments in the initial course of European capitalist development. As Marx recognizes the link between economic status (class) and ideology (culture), Weber takes this link further as he argues that social status is not only determined by class position, but also by cultural status. Class is a function of a person’s or group’s position in the capitalist market, both in terms of relations of production and in terms of ability to consume goods and services in the market. On the other hand, social status is about a person’s or group’s lifestyle, education, training, socialization, and prestige. These resources mutually contribute to the gaining of cultural status where middle classes have ambiguous position. They are “one step removed from the productive processes of capital” (Liechty, 2003, p. 15) as they relate to productive processes neither as sellers of labor nor as owners of capital but as consumers of goods in the market place. This distance from mere laboring and mere wealth enables the creation of distinctive morality pursued by groups of people through their privileged access to goods and services. According to Weber, this middle class morality is related to its position within the larger class economy and its rhetoric can be used to naturalize and defend middle-class privilege. In addition, members of the middle-class live in a relatively unstable socioeconomic condition as a result of their ambiguous relationship to the productive economy.
Inspired by E.P. Thompson’s notion of class (see Thompson, 1966, p. 9), Liechty argues that class is a process, neither structure nor category, but something that has happened or happens in reality. Even though Marx and Weber theories have facilitated insights into the formation of middle-class in Kathmandu, they are still handicapped to explain middle-class formation as a cultural process where people tell and listen to stories. Therefore, Liechty adopts concepts of performativity (see Butler, 1990, p. 17) and narrativity (see Somers, 1997, p. 75) as ways of understanding the cultural processes of middle-class life in Kathmandu. In performativity perspective, class is a reality that exists only in its perpetual sociocultural enactment within a limiting matrix of intelligibility. So this perspective helps understand how people actively produce class culture consistently in a regular way through open dramaturgy and extensive mass mediation. These mass-mediated tones of dramas are created and recreated to be reality through stories told and lived by people in their daily lives in the forms of narratives. These narratives become very meaningful when they are shifted to be stories that are able to naturalize certain privileged cultural practices collectively and publicly. Through these cultural narratives, people learn who they are and who they are supposed to be. Then, the idea of narrativity comes to provide meanings on the cultural creation made through performances. These cultural meanings become more complex in the moment of global modernity where global narratives alive represented in certain values like progress, achievement, and growth and local narratives intermingle in reality with equal power of value, honor, and meaning. In this cultural situation, Kathmandu’s emerging middle class must struggle morally, materially, and ideologically to be recognized or counted by participating in producing a new culture space that has not come to reality before. In so doing, their self-consciousness is guided by the awareness of their position between high and low classes and at the same time, they are forced to pioneer a space for Nepali national identity somewhere between the global ideological poles of tradition and modernity (Liechty, 2003, p. 7).
In order to be able to explain how middle class culture is formed or how middle classes create their own culture space, Liechty introduces three very important elements of the middle class formation, i.e. consumption, mass media, and youth culture. These elements are closely related to each other under the underlying notion of commercial commodity. Class and consumption are mutually linked to form middle-class culture where people who have access to economic resources will have higher probability to “do shopping and fashion”. The act of shopping and fashioning is one moment in the processes of becoming middle class members. Middle-class membership will be determined based on the extent people share a common orientation to capitalist productive processes by becoming consumers of commodities, and on the extent they make consumption as their primary mode of cultural production. Only by this level of communality, this group of people will have ability to both include and exclude others by both displaying and concealing their class privilege through the power of commodity and their commercial practices within their cultural boundary or space. Liechty explains how shopping and fashioning performed and ideologized,
“When it comes to determining who counts and who does not, fashion is the name of the game. In the display and negotiation of status and prestige, fashion-and the consumer lifestyle generally-is the most alluring and ubiquitous contest in the city. At the most basic level, doing fashion serves as a kind of gatekeeping device for the middle class. Without certain disposable income, many in Kathmandu are unable to stake a claim to middle-class membership, because they are unable to display fashioned self (p. 140).
Liechty argues that mass media plays an important role in the lives of the middle-class in Kathmandu. He portrays this role by locating media consumption within consumer culture articulated actively in the form of commercial entertainment media consumption. Interestingly, he puts these media products in line with other consumables in order to assign them to the broader patterns of commodity promotion and consumption. Therefore, this constant media involvement in the processes of negotiating other goods results into a mutual relation where media and other goods promote each other. Middle-class consumption, according to him, is not only the act of having, but it is most importantly about middle-class production or project. When these constant processes occur on the daily basis, the middle-class performs its existence through consumer regimens. One of the ways they perform their middle-class existence is through the act of doing fashion. Liechty explains,
“For members of Kathmandu’s middle class, doing fashion is not a luxury but a necessity. Indeed, attention to, or even a preoccupation with, fashion was almost a defining feature of the middle class (p. 135). The insecurity of middle-classness breeds a kind of focused earnestness about dress and the need to boast about new acquisitions. For them, proper clothing is a big deal and constitutes an important part of their claims to membership in the urban middle class” (p. 136)
Furthermore, Liechty explains how the production of youth culture has become one of the most important elements of the middle-class production in Kathmandu. He argues “in capitalist modernity the constitution of a particular form of youth identity of youth culture has been an integral part of middle-class formation” (p. 35). According to Liechty, the role of the youth tends to be instrumental as bearers of middle-class culture as their identity always changes according to the demands of middle-class industrial and consumption orientation. From stories of the youth, Liechty explains,
“For this young man, it was fashion that simultaneously linked him to the modern world-the other big cities-and separated him from the rest of Nepal. Through fashion he could indentify both with other fashionable people in the city and with a transnational urban fashion scene. For him, fashion linked the local middle-class with a global culture of modernity” (p. 140).
“Consciously dressing to gain positive reaction of others is not a dishonest action. It is a way of encourage people to regard you with interest. It is an invitation to explore the interesting and dynamic person that is behind a well presented visual image” (p. 221).
Liechty’s book has shown how cultural practices performed and narrated overtly to form a new culture space where the middle-class have their own identity between the high and the low within the context of global modernity and local traditionality. However, he does not pay attention on the inter-class relations as much as he pays attention to the intra-class relation within middle-class members. His inclination to emphasize on intra-class relation rather than on inter-class relation, I think, has some reasons. First, fluidity and ambiguity of the middle-classness needs extra labor to draw clear lines among class categories in order to be able to show how they inter-correlate each other. Second, when class defined as a non-categorical and non-structural thing, I think, it becomes very difficult to show how they inter-correlate each other because class, then, must be understood as a continuous process where boundaries are created and recreated. Thus, streamlines between class boundaries are “unstable”. Relatively stable class boundary is necessary in order to be able to see how inter-class relations occur in a new culture space, e.g. urban Kathmandu.
From Bourdieu’s symbolic structuralist perspective, the new culture space in fact occurs from the internal tension between the global modernity and local traditionality, between the high and the low class through processes of symbolic violence. Be counted or not counted that is determined by fashion game does matter to be included or excluded from middle-class ownership. It is the violence of not being counted that motivates people to act and adopt values that are suitably modern (distinction), i.e. ability to negotiate and locate modernity and traditionality. In addition, cultural reproduction that happens through cultural practices using performances and narratives represents the way middle-classness passed on (i.e. socialization) from generation to generation where mass media and production of youth culture plays a very important role.
Comparison between the formation of Nepal middle-class and other class formations cannot be taken too far, especially when those class formations are dealt with different methods and class categories. However, qualitatively tentative comparison still makes sense to pursue for the sake of better understanding. For example, even though Liechty uses cultural processual approach that is different from the symbolic structural approach used by Koo in Korean Workers to explain the formation of working class, both studies have shown some similarities between the middle-class “performers” and the working class “fighters”. In their long-term struggles to form class identities both class actors have experienced deprivation and aggravation with different equation in terms of its character. While South Korean workers had experienced both physical and psychological violence and torture, the Nepali middle-class had experienced the hardship of imagining being in the low class characterized with vulgarity and the infeasibility of being in the high class dominated by the economic and cultural capitalist. To the Nepali middle-class actors, they had to struggle for a new culture space to be counted as the South Korean workers had to fight against the employers and state to gain social and cultural recognition. Also, both class categories had been looking for status and social recognition from others regardless of their class categories. In the case of the South Korean workers, the establishment of the working class as a class identity has not changed their collective position as workers, but it did change their social and cultural status in the eyes of people. Similar to the Nepali middle-classes, they wanted to be “counted properly” by creating a distinctive cultural space. Furthermore, class-consciousness plays very important role for both types of class formation and both require commonality. It is cultural class-consciousness that has enabled the middle-class to practice values and behaviors that they think can make them to be included and allow them to exclude others. The same thing for the working class formation in South Korea, it is class-consciousness from their existential experiences that has motivated them to organize and mobilize their power against the ruling class. Nevertheless, both class formations employ different proximity. The formation of cultural middle-class in Nepal applied cultural space (e.g. lifestyles and fashion) as their field to practice class whereas the working class in South Korea used environmental and bureaucratic space (e.g. factories, streets and unions) to practice their power against the ruling class. Finally, both class formations have used the notion of ideologization as an instrument to legitimize, naturalize, and defend their social status and position. In the case of middle-class in Nepal, they employ metanarratives or stories as a mechanism for socialization and in turn ideologization of their cultural class, whereas the South Korean workers used education and culture of han (Koo, 2001, p. 130, 136), for example, as ideological tools to develop and strengthen their struggles for class recognition.
11:52 AM
Korean Workers: the Culture and Politics of Class Formation
Unregarded Lives
This essay is an analytical reading on Hagen Koo’s book Korean Workers: the Culture and Politics of Class Formation. It introduces Koo’s main objective and questions, his sociological and theoretical arguments applied to explain Korean worker phenomenon, and how he treats data to facilitate and strengthen his sociological arguments in his effort to answer the main issue addressed in the study. At the end of this essay, I will limit my analysis for practicality on how students have played a very important role using their cultural capital in the process of class formation in South Korea in relation to Koo’s logic dynamic.
Apart from poor and inhumane work conditions, workers’ wages in 1970s were very low and unilaterally decided by the employers. A series of workers’ conflicts and strikes against the hegemony of their capitalist employers and pro-capital authoritarian state in 1980s and 1990s had given rise to the promising and dramatic change of workers’ class, status and identity. Koo in his book seeks to explain why South Korea’s workers turned drastically from docile and submissive workers to become one of the most militant, if not the only, class movements recorded in the modern history of Asia. On the other hand, from his comparative perspective, he advanced the question of why “South Korean workers were far more successful than their counterparts elsewhere in East Asia in developing a strong and aggressive labor movement” (p. 3). Thus, his study deals with the history of South Korean workers and industrialization. Koo emphasizes, however, that this book is not the history of workers and industrialization from the ruling class perspective; it is a history from the grass-root perspective. Thereby, I think, this study is critically done to encounter the hegemony of the ruling class in the working-class literature. Koo explains that because labor does not play aggressive role in development, there has been little attention given to the labor issues in East Asian countries. This leniency is in line with the orientations of several writings available on labor. These writings, as Koo criticizes, do not show enough inclination to show labor issues as a class problem, rather they focus on labor docility, weakness and exclusion from politics. In addition, Koo sees that issues raised regarding labor are too general (i.e. applicable across East Asian countries) around confusion culture, rapid economic growth and role of the state, and this, as a result, fails to properly capture the aggressive labor movement in South Korea (p. 6-7). Furthermore, available literature tends to see the problem from a simplistic, reductionist and essentialist point of view. This less critical and simplistic studies have led Koo to the idea of using comparative approach (e.g. European class formation experiences, and other less progressive class movements in other Asian countries) within historical, contextual and constructivist perspective toward cultural and political aspects that interacted closely to facilitate the dramatically progressive formation of class in South Korea. This implies that this study wants to show that class formation process is not a structurally static and closed-ended process, but it is a dynamic and open-ended one. I think because of this conceptual stand, Koo emphasizes that class formation is not a straight forward process of completion, but it is a back and forth process or a water flow-like process in which the actors intelligibly and consciously negotiate with their real conditions in the process of to be or not to be. In short, Koo uses the dynamic dialectical logic to explain the process of class formation in which cultural, political and social factors closely intertwined to facilitate the rapid formation of the working class in South Korea. Therefore, throughout his writing, he strongly argues that workers’ experiences of severe aggravation and excessive humiliation give rise to the class-consciousness. However, these experiences, according to Koo, will not bring about expected changes without the existence of other forms of movement resources, i.e. cultural, economical and political.
In addressing his questions, Koo comes with different types of supporting data, i.e. statistics, interviews, news documents and pictures. He deals with these data in a unique way of combining complexity and simplicity with one clear goal - is to support different arguments that he lays out in the book. I think this way of treating data is a necessity required by his theoretical and conceptual approach; an approach not guided by a simple linear logic, rather it is a comprehensive approach that takes the complexity of issues into account in order to bring out better argued and supported explanations. Such an approach, I think, is not an easy choice to accomplish due to the dominance of positivistic paradigm during Koo’s initial intellectual training (i.e. his graduate). In addition, the non-linearity of thought employed by Koo increases the explanatory power of the study at the expense of its more predictive power. However, this does not mean Koo has not considered social change prediction in his analysis. This prediction effort had been, by and large, made when Koo introduced the issue of undecided features of South Korean working class within national and global context at the last chapter of his book.
My analysis, as I said initially, will focus on how students played a very important role using their cultural capital in the class formation process in South Korea. In chapter 5, Koo explains
“Entering the 1980s with bitter political experiences and a growing awareness of the need to build broad alliances with other democratic forces in their struggle against the immensely power state, students developed a new orientation toward labor. They no longer look at industrial laborers as mere objects of humanitarian concern. They now looked on them as their most important political allies and as potentially a most powerful force for social transformations … They realized, however, that the power of labor remained only a potential; it had yet to be tapped and mobilized” (p. 105).
Repressive state that was preoccupied with rapid economic growth for the interest of the capitalist and politicians who collaborated to control the majority of the assets or resources in South Korea caused social resentment and depression both at minor (e.g. working places) and macro level (e.g. public sphere). The interaction between students and workers that started earlier in the 1970s has moved to become more complex, from focusing on the humanitarian issues to the democratic and political issues. Students and workers were united by their common goals, namely to enjoy equal opportunities to obtain better life chances as South Korean citizens. This unique combination, according to Koo, was among the reasons why the worker movement in South Korea obtained higher level of strength and quality compared to other industrializing countries in the region. In addition, this more mature worker movement actually was the result of a long-term upgraded process of class awareness socialization by the students who had involved directly and side by side with the factory workers to fight against injustice. These direct working experiences enabled students to be fully committed to the enlightenment process of workers. Furthermore, the extreme level of capital-aligned state’s repression made the student and workers’ intimacy to be unpredictably far more solid and unturned.
Koo argued strongly that it was the close collaboration between students and workers in the moment of political crisis that had made the path of South Korean workers movement very distinctive compared to their counterparts in other Asian countries. However, in his discussion of students and workers, I found two points that are interesting for me to make comments on. Notably, the comments I will make are not directly related to the points he made on the above-mentioned argument, but they are related to his logic dynamic. First, Koo uses the terms ‘intellectuals’ and ‘intelligentsias’ to refer to students, dissident political intellectuals and religious leaders. He emphasized in p. 99 of the book that even though intellectuals played a very important role in the labor movement, they were not the real agents of the struggles; but those female workers were the real agents and those of intelligentsias were only the catalysts. Koo wants to stress the importance of role played by the female workers and he succeeds to do that without underestimating the role played by the intelligentsias. Nevertheless, when students became deeply involved in labor struggles by entering factories, I think, there was a recursive direction of internal capital exchange between workers and students. Empowered and enlightened workers had obtained a certain level of intellectuality through training led by students, students-turned-workers, on the other hand, had gained the capacity of becoming agents of struggle as their counterpart workers thorough work experiences. At this stage, Koo does not seem to have an interest in addressing this issue of agency as he does initially in relation to the female workers and church leaders. Second, Koo talked about Lee, a female student worker, who was not given a leadership role in the union once her identity was revealed (p. 122). Koo did not explore this data further (i.e. why she was excluded by the real workers). I think there was an agency conflict or agency misidentification here. If it is important to clarify who are the agents and who are the catalysts in the initial chapter as he did, it also becomes conceptually important at this stage to identify the agency status, and how it guides the interest relations among actors. Being able to identify the agency issue at this stage, I think, can facilitate to highlight the inter-agent dynamic of the labor movement in the 1980s (e.g. Lee case). However, both points do not deter the depth and the richness of Koo’s significant study on South Korean movements. This study has recorded analytically and critically the most important moment of the labor movement in South Korea and more or less has brought about an important impact on the way people, especially in South Korea perceive labor and political movements in the country.
Apart from poor and inhumane work conditions, workers’ wages in 1970s were very low and unilaterally decided by the employers. A series of workers’ conflicts and strikes against the hegemony of their capitalist employers and pro-capital authoritarian state in 1980s and 1990s had given rise to the promising and dramatic change of workers’ class, status and identity. Koo in his book seeks to explain why South Korea’s workers turned drastically from docile and submissive workers to become one of the most militant, if not the only, class movements recorded in the modern history of Asia. On the other hand, from his comparative perspective, he advanced the question of why “South Korean workers were far more successful than their counterparts elsewhere in East Asia in developing a strong and aggressive labor movement” (p. 3). Thus, his study deals with the history of South Korean workers and industrialization. Koo emphasizes, however, that this book is not the history of workers and industrialization from the ruling class perspective; it is a history from the grass-root perspective. Thereby, I think, this study is critically done to encounter the hegemony of the ruling class in the working-class literature. Koo explains that because labor does not play aggressive role in development, there has been little attention given to the labor issues in East Asian countries. This leniency is in line with the orientations of several writings available on labor. These writings, as Koo criticizes, do not show enough inclination to show labor issues as a class problem, rather they focus on labor docility, weakness and exclusion from politics. In addition, Koo sees that issues raised regarding labor are too general (i.e. applicable across East Asian countries) around confusion culture, rapid economic growth and role of the state, and this, as a result, fails to properly capture the aggressive labor movement in South Korea (p. 6-7). Furthermore, available literature tends to see the problem from a simplistic, reductionist and essentialist point of view. This less critical and simplistic studies have led Koo to the idea of using comparative approach (e.g. European class formation experiences, and other less progressive class movements in other Asian countries) within historical, contextual and constructivist perspective toward cultural and political aspects that interacted closely to facilitate the dramatically progressive formation of class in South Korea. This implies that this study wants to show that class formation process is not a structurally static and closed-ended process, but it is a dynamic and open-ended one. I think because of this conceptual stand, Koo emphasizes that class formation is not a straight forward process of completion, but it is a back and forth process or a water flow-like process in which the actors intelligibly and consciously negotiate with their real conditions in the process of to be or not to be. In short, Koo uses the dynamic dialectical logic to explain the process of class formation in which cultural, political and social factors closely intertwined to facilitate the rapid formation of the working class in South Korea. Therefore, throughout his writing, he strongly argues that workers’ experiences of severe aggravation and excessive humiliation give rise to the class-consciousness. However, these experiences, according to Koo, will not bring about expected changes without the existence of other forms of movement resources, i.e. cultural, economical and political.
In addressing his questions, Koo comes with different types of supporting data, i.e. statistics, interviews, news documents and pictures. He deals with these data in a unique way of combining complexity and simplicity with one clear goal - is to support different arguments that he lays out in the book. I think this way of treating data is a necessity required by his theoretical and conceptual approach; an approach not guided by a simple linear logic, rather it is a comprehensive approach that takes the complexity of issues into account in order to bring out better argued and supported explanations. Such an approach, I think, is not an easy choice to accomplish due to the dominance of positivistic paradigm during Koo’s initial intellectual training (i.e. his graduate). In addition, the non-linearity of thought employed by Koo increases the explanatory power of the study at the expense of its more predictive power. However, this does not mean Koo has not considered social change prediction in his analysis. This prediction effort had been, by and large, made when Koo introduced the issue of undecided features of South Korean working class within national and global context at the last chapter of his book.
My analysis, as I said initially, will focus on how students played a very important role using their cultural capital in the class formation process in South Korea. In chapter 5, Koo explains
“Entering the 1980s with bitter political experiences and a growing awareness of the need to build broad alliances with other democratic forces in their struggle against the immensely power state, students developed a new orientation toward labor. They no longer look at industrial laborers as mere objects of humanitarian concern. They now looked on them as their most important political allies and as potentially a most powerful force for social transformations … They realized, however, that the power of labor remained only a potential; it had yet to be tapped and mobilized” (p. 105).
Repressive state that was preoccupied with rapid economic growth for the interest of the capitalist and politicians who collaborated to control the majority of the assets or resources in South Korea caused social resentment and depression both at minor (e.g. working places) and macro level (e.g. public sphere). The interaction between students and workers that started earlier in the 1970s has moved to become more complex, from focusing on the humanitarian issues to the democratic and political issues. Students and workers were united by their common goals, namely to enjoy equal opportunities to obtain better life chances as South Korean citizens. This unique combination, according to Koo, was among the reasons why the worker movement in South Korea obtained higher level of strength and quality compared to other industrializing countries in the region. In addition, this more mature worker movement actually was the result of a long-term upgraded process of class awareness socialization by the students who had involved directly and side by side with the factory workers to fight against injustice. These direct working experiences enabled students to be fully committed to the enlightenment process of workers. Furthermore, the extreme level of capital-aligned state’s repression made the student and workers’ intimacy to be unpredictably far more solid and unturned.
Koo argued strongly that it was the close collaboration between students and workers in the moment of political crisis that had made the path of South Korean workers movement very distinctive compared to their counterparts in other Asian countries. However, in his discussion of students and workers, I found two points that are interesting for me to make comments on. Notably, the comments I will make are not directly related to the points he made on the above-mentioned argument, but they are related to his logic dynamic. First, Koo uses the terms ‘intellectuals’ and ‘intelligentsias’ to refer to students, dissident political intellectuals and religious leaders. He emphasized in p. 99 of the book that even though intellectuals played a very important role in the labor movement, they were not the real agents of the struggles; but those female workers were the real agents and those of intelligentsias were only the catalysts. Koo wants to stress the importance of role played by the female workers and he succeeds to do that without underestimating the role played by the intelligentsias. Nevertheless, when students became deeply involved in labor struggles by entering factories, I think, there was a recursive direction of internal capital exchange between workers and students. Empowered and enlightened workers had obtained a certain level of intellectuality through training led by students, students-turned-workers, on the other hand, had gained the capacity of becoming agents of struggle as their counterpart workers thorough work experiences. At this stage, Koo does not seem to have an interest in addressing this issue of agency as he does initially in relation to the female workers and church leaders. Second, Koo talked about Lee, a female student worker, who was not given a leadership role in the union once her identity was revealed (p. 122). Koo did not explore this data further (i.e. why she was excluded by the real workers). I think there was an agency conflict or agency misidentification here. If it is important to clarify who are the agents and who are the catalysts in the initial chapter as he did, it also becomes conceptually important at this stage to identify the agency status, and how it guides the interest relations among actors. Being able to identify the agency issue at this stage, I think, can facilitate to highlight the inter-agent dynamic of the labor movement in the 1980s (e.g. Lee case). However, both points do not deter the depth and the richness of Koo’s significant study on South Korean movements. This study has recorded analytically and critically the most important moment of the labor movement in South Korea and more or less has brought about an important impact on the way people, especially in South Korea perceive labor and political movements in the country.
11:49 AM
What is Ethnography?
Unregarded Lives
Ethnographic information plays an important role for social scientists, such as anthropologists, who have concern with developing scientific studies of humans based on reliable accounts of their cultures (Ellen, 1984, p. 60). In order to realize this aim, those scientists often apply a unique blend of specific methods and techniques within the context of structure and function, structure and attribute called participation observation (Ellen, 1984, p. 20). Thus, ethnography is more or less a style of research rather than a single method trying to study people in natural setting or field in order to obtain social meanings attached to people’s activities by immersion (Brewer, 2000; Brandriet, 1994). Very often people are confused with participation observation, but ethnography does not necessarily require participation. However, it remains the main features of the ethnographic approach. Ethnography uses variety of possible methods as other research design uses, but it employs them with a different underlying approach, namely to explore the social meanings of people by close involvement in the field (Becker & Bryman, 2004, p. 276). Some equate ethnography with anthropology, but currently it is applied by different social sciences including sociology. Thus, equating ethnography with only one disciplinary tradition is not a wise stand (Atkinson, Delamont, & Lofland, 2007, p. 2). Fetterman (1989) defines ethnography as “what ethnographers actually do in the field” (p. 26). In this essay, ethnography is identified with immersion in a social setting for an extended period of time, making regular observations of the behavior of members of that setting, listening to and engaging in conversations, interviewing informants on issues that the ethnographer is unclear about, collecting documents about the group, developing an understanding of the culture of the group and people’s behavior within the context of that culture, and writing up a detailed account of that setting (Bryman, 2004, p. 293).
Several Conceptual Considerations
Culture
Culture can be defined from behaviorist and cognitive perspectives. Culture, from behavior perspective, can be defined as social group’ observable patterns of behavior, customs, and way of life (Harris, 1968, p. 16); and from cognitive perspective, culture is ideas, beliefs, and knowledge that characterize a particular group of people (Fetterman, 1989, p. 27). Having such a cultural concept will help ethnographers identify logic and cohesive patterns underlying ideas and behaviors of a group. This ability to describe what has been heard and seen within the framework of the social group’s view of reality is defined as a cultural interpretation (Geertz, 1973, p. 6).
Holistic Perspective
Ethnographers are interested in discovering the interrelationships among the various systems and subsystems in a community or program under study through contextualization. This orientation can be realized if they use a holistic view in describing as many aspects as possible about a certain culture or a social group. This description might include history, religion, politics, economy and environment. Such a description, of course, demands a great deal of time (Fetterman, 1989). However, if it can be done properly, it can be very rewarding both academically and professionally for the researcher.
Emic Perspective and Multiple Realities
In contrast to a priori assumptions about how systems work from a simple, linear, logical perspective, ethnographers typically take a phenomenology-oriented approach that tends to accept and recognize multiple realities. This is the consequence of understanding reality from inner or native perspective, from the point of view who experiences it. This emic perspective helps the ethnographers to understand why members of social group do what they do (Fetterman, 1989, pp. 30-31).
Etic Perspective
In contrast to the emic perspective, an etic perspective is the external, social scientific perspective on reality. Unlike in past days, most ethnographers nowadays “see emic and etic orientations as markers along a continuum of styles or different levels of analysis” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 31). Thus, good ethnography requires both emic and etic perspective as it requires an insightful and sensitive cultural interpretation combined with rigorous data collection techniques.
Why Ethnography?
Ethnography is a sound alternative of approaches when a researcher is interested in testing formal theories using grounded and empirical ways. Thus, ethnography can help to develop and discover a grounded theory by providing comprehensively cultural description. In addition, when understanding the complexity of societies is required, ethnography can facilitate scientifically empirical data and explanation to understand human behavior and ideas attached to their social activities (Spradley, 1980, pp. 15-16).
In terms of comprehensiveness, there are two kinds of ethnography, namely full scale and half-scale ethnography. Full-scale ethnography is very timing consuming and requires very comprehensive insight to the culture or people group under study. This seems not to be a wise choice for students working on their thesis or dissertation.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethnography
Each method and approach in research has its own relevance and context. No one method can address all issues and questions. Ethnography also has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
Ethnography has a focus on natural, ordinary events in natural settings, so that it can help us to have strong handle and understanding on what it is real that might be latent and non-obvious. It uses multiple data collection methods with all possible aspects of the culture or people under study over reasonably sustained period, so that it can reveal complexity beyond the snapshot of what and how many to how and why things happen. Furthermore, ethnography with the emphasis on people’s lived experiences is well suited for locating the meanings people place on the events, processes, and patterns of their lives (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 11).
Disadvantages
The most uncomfortable aspect of the ethnographic method is time consuming. Ideally, it should take at least six months to two years. Within this period, there are so many things might happen, from personal to professional issues that can put the study into end. It is also risky in terms of access to the group of people or organizations. It needs highly creative approaches to have enough access to the culture or group of people under study.
How Do We Do Ethnography?
Access
One of the most difficult steps in ethnography is gaining access to a social setting that is relevant to the research problem in which you are interested. The way in which access is approached differs along several dimensions, one of which is whether the setting is a relatively open one or a relatively closed one (Bell 1969). Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) make a similar distinction when they refer to ‘public’ setting as opposed to ones that are not public. Closed, non-public settings are likely to be organizations of various kinds, such as firms, schools, cults, social movements, and so on. The open/public setting is likely to be everything else-that is, research involving communities, gangs, drug users, and so on.
Based on this access-based division, Bryman (2004) mentions four forms of ethnography and samples of studies done using these forms:
First, overt role-open/public setting in which ethnographer or field worker enter open organization after telling the host organization about his or her identity as a researcher. Studies done using this form of role are study of intravenous drug users by A. Taylor (1993), study of a high-crime community by Foster (1995), study of working-class ‘lads’, and classic study of street corner life in a Boston slum area by Whyte (1955).
Second, overt role/closed setting in which ethnographer enters a closed setting organization, but he or she is able to reveal his or her identity as a researcher to the subject. Studies completed apply this access form are studies of a McDonald’s restaurant and an insurance firm by Leidner (1993), research in a UK accountancy firm by Coffey (1999), research on a Roman Catholic comprehensive school by Burgess (1983, 1987).
Third, covert role-open/public setting in which ethnographer enters an open organization or group setting without disclosing his or her identity, for example a study of a violent Glasgow gang by Patrick (1973).
Fourth, covert role-closed setting in which ethnographer has access to a closed organization or group setting without revealing his or her identity as a researcher. Studies performed using this access type are study of a police force in which he was already a policeman by Holdaway (1982, 1983), study of the National Front by Fielding (1981, 1982) and study of bouncers by Hobbs et al. (2003).
It is worth noting that public versus closed setting distinction is not a fixed one. Organizations that have a closed feature sometimes have a public character, such as the gatherings that are open for all members. This is also applied to the distinction made between overt and covert ethnography. When an ethnographer has access thorough overt route, there may be many people who come to in contact with the ethnographer without realizing that he or she is a fieldworker. In addition, most ethnographic studies done fall within type one or two. This reflects the fact that ethnographers are far more likely to take overt role than a covert role (Bryman, 2004) due to, perhaps, the ethics issues involved in the overt role are less problematic.
Overt versus convert ethnography
When an ethnographer comes to the field, he or she has choice to enter it overtly or covertly. This decision is often made based on the level of access difficulty and ethic consideration. In a certain condition, covert role must be taken to ease the access problem by not telling the group that one is a researcher.
Access to closed settings
As long as the research questions raised are relevant to the organization, access to it should not be a problem. However, it is very important to ask help from friends, contacts, colleagues and academics to have access easier. Those people can make difference when they are approached properly prior to the fieldwork. This indicates the importance of trying to get the support of someone within the organization who will act as sponsors or gatekeepers. Top managers or senior executives in an organization are among the most important agents to approach in order to get better access to an organization. Apart from an ability to provide clear explanation of one’s aims and methods, offering something in return, like report, can be trustworthy. Furthermore, preparedness to negotiate issues that might be concerned with the organization under study, including its people’s time, is necessary to have access (Bryman, 2004, p. 296).
Access to open/public settings
Gaining access to public settings has some problems similar to that of getting access to closed settings. So, access strategy becomes very important. Getting access via gatekeepers and sponsors are the most common practices among ethnographers. There is another technique of getting access; that is hanging around strategy (Bryman, 2004, p. 297).
Ongoing Access
After one succeeds to get access to the group, he or she still needs access to people. Gaining access to the group does not warrant that one will have an easy path through organization, especially in closed contexts, like organizations. People will have suspicions about him or her, perhaps seeing him or her as an instrument of top management. In order to solve this problem, one need to make sure that he or she has thought about ways in which people’s suspicions can be eased by being prepared for test of his or her competence, credibility and changes any time (Bryman, 2004, pp. 299-300).
Key Informants
It is necessary to have key informant in the field. Key informant becomes the principal information resources for the field workers. They are different from respondent. Almost everyone is be able to become a respondent for the ethnographer, but only limited number of group members that are suitable to be a key informant. Such a person must be knowledgeable about the community or group that is under study. Key informants often direct the ethnographers or fieldworkers to situations, events, or people likely to be helpful to the progress of the investigation. However, the ethnographer needs to look for other resources of information in order to avoid to be trapped into seeing social reality only through the eyes of the key informant (Bryman, 2004).
Roles for Ethnographers
Role of ethnographers is about how ethnographers locate themselves relative to the social setting and its members. This role can be classified based on the degree of their involvement and detachment from members of the society under study. (1) Complete participant: when an ethnographer becomes fully functioning member of the social setting and his or her identity is not known to members; (2) Participant-as-observer: when ethnographers takes full function in the social setting and members of the social setting are also aware of his or her status as a researcher; (3) Observer-as-participant: when the researcher is mainly an interviewer and has very little participation; and (4) Complete observer: The researcher does not interact with people so that people do not have to take the researcher into account. Such a role can be found in studies using forms of observation that are unobtrusive in nature (Bryman, 2004).
This classification should not be understood that each form stands itself exclusively because this actually reflects the degrees of involvement and detachment as well as it recognizes that actually ethnographers do not only use a single role throughout their dealings (Bryman, 2004). Complete observer role is argued not to be included as participant observation because it does not requires immersion in a social setting and prolonged involvement. However, others argue none of these forms is risk-free. Covert role, for example, can help ethnographers get rid of access problem because permission is not necessary, but it breaks two important ethical principles, namely it does not provide participants with the opportunity for informed consent and it allows deception. The observer-as-participant role carries the risk of not understanding the social setting and people in it sufficiently that can bring about the making of incorrect inferences. Both complete observer role and complete participation remove the more likely reactivity problem, but complete observer role carries even further risks than the observer-as-participant role; that is failing to understand situations.
Sampling
Sampling in ethnography is different from sampling in quantitative research design. Unlike quantitative research that has an aim to generate generalization, ethnography has a focus on developing empirical based theory generated from meanings underpinning social activities of people under study.
Ethnography often samples informants using a combination of convenience and snowballing sampling technique. Very often ethnographers face opposition or at least indifference to their research so that they often have to start to get information from whatever resources are available. But, whatever the sampling methods ethnographers employ, they have to ensure that they gain access to as wide a range of individuals relevant to the research questions as possible (Bryman, 2004).
An alternative strategy to sample is theoretical sampling. According to Glaser and Strauss (1967), theoretical sampling “is the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect next and where to find them, in order to develop his theory as it emerges”. Theoretical sampling is a defining property of grounded theory and is concerned with the refinement of ideas, rather than boosting sample size. In grounded theory, a researcher can carry on collecting data (observing, interviewing, collecting documents) until he or she has achieved theoretical saturation: after successive interviews or observations have both formed the basis for the creation of a category and confirmed its importance, there is no need to continue with data collection in relation to that category or cluster of categories. The researcher should move on and generate hypotheses out of the categories that are building up and then move on to collecting data in relation to these hypotheses. He or she samples in terms of what is relevant to and meaningful for his or her theory (Bryman, 2004). It is also important that ethnographic research sampling is not just about people but also other things. Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) mention time and context as units to be considered in the context of sampling. Attending to time means that the ethnographer must make sure that people or events are observed at different times of the day and different days of the week. It is also important to sample in terms of context. People’s behavior is influenced by contextual factors so that it is important to ensure that such behavior is observed in a variety of locations.
Field Notes
Ethnographers have to take notes based on their observations. These notes are recommended to specify key dimensions of whatever is observed and heard. In order to develop a good system of making field notes, there are some general principles to take into account: write down notes, however brief, as quickly as possible after hearing or seeing something interesting; write up full field notes at the very latest at the end of the day and include such details as locations, who is involved, what prompted that exchange or whatever, date, and time of the day, etc; when it is possible, use voice recorder to record initial notes, but this may create a problem of needing to transcribe a lot of speech; notes must be vivid and clear; you need to take copious notes, so, if in doubt, write it down.
The degree of research question clarity when ethnographers enter the field to some extent will guide strategies they use for taking notes. Most ethnographers start with a general research question and they will direct their focuses to some specific questions in the course of research process. Once this occurs, they have to orientate their observations to that research focus. However, this new direction must keep them open minded so that they do not lose the element of flexibility, one of the most important features and strength of the qualitative research.
The main equipment in the course of observation will be a note pad and pen. It is also possible to use voice recorder as well as camera as data collection equipments (Bryman, 2004). Currently, there is an increasing use of visual articles to be one of data resources.
Types of field notes
Some writers recommend that ethnographers classify the types of field notes generated in the process of conducting ethnography. Lofland & Lofland (1984) and Sanjek, 1990 suggest the following field note classification: (a) mental notes that are particularly useful when it is inappropriate to be seen taking notes; (b) jotted notes or scratch notes, i.e. very brief notes written down on pieces of paper or in small notebook to jog one’s memory about events that should be written up later; and (c) full field notes that are detailed notes which will be main data source made as soon as possible. These full notes should be written at the end of day or sooner if possible. In these notes, events, people, conversations and everything might be useful information is kept in the record. From here, the ethnographer can start doing preliminary analysis by putting initial ideas about interpretation and recording his or her impressions and feelings (Bryman, 2004).
How to End the Fieldwork
Leaving the field to end the fieldwork is not a clear cut process in ethnography due to its unstructured nature and absence of specific hypotheses to be tested other than those that might emerge during data collection and analysis. Ethnographers can close his or her ethnographical works because of various reasons, from occupational career, personal and family life to the end of research funding. Moreover, ethnographic research can be highly stressful for many reasons such as the nature of the topic places the fieldworker in stressful situations, the marginality of the researcher in the social setting and the need constantly to manage a front, and the prolonged absence from one’s normal life (Bryman, 2004). However, there is an ideal reason to leave the field work for ethnographers: the belief that enough data have been gathered to describe the culture or problem convincingly and to say something significant about it. This ethnographic saturation can be identified when the same specific pattern of behavior emerges over and over again and when the general picture reaffirms itself over and over again (Fetterman, 1989).
When an ethnographer leaving the field work, he or she must manage the process in a proper way. First, she or he must keep the promise, like if he or she promises a report to an organization as a condition of entry, that promise should not be forgotten. Second, he or she also must provide good explanations for his or her departure. Third, ethical commitments must not be forgotten, such as the need to ensure person and setting confidentiality unless there has been an argument that the nature of such a social setting can be disclosed.
Conclusion
Ethnography is only one of the available approaches that can be used to investigate certain social issues. Even though, it is originally developed within the anthropological realm of social sciences, it is actually employed by different areas of social sciences, such as sociology and education. It is really well suited for the study that is intended to provide answers on questions related to cultural issues in a comprehensive and holistic way within a natural setting.
References
Atkinson, P., Delamont, S., & Lofland, J. (2007). Handbook of ethnography. London: SAGE.
Becker, S., & Bryman, A. (2004). Understanding research for social policy and practice: themes, methods and approaches. UK: The Policy Press.
Brandriet, L. M. (1994). Gerontological nursing: application of ethnography and grounded theory. Journal of Gerontology, 34-40.
Bryman, A. (2004). Social research methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellen, R. F. (1984). Ethnographic research: a guide to general conduct. London: Academic Press .
Fetterman, D. M. (1989). Ethnography: Step by step. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. New York: Basic Books.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, L. A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. New York: Aldine Pub. Co.
Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (1995). Ethnography: principles in practice. London: Routledge.
Harris, M. (1968). The rise of anthropological theory. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.
Lofland, J., & Lofland, L. H. (1984). Analyzing social settings: a guide to qualitative observation and analysis. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Pub. Co.
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis. London: SAGE.
Sanjek, R. (1990). Fieldnotes: the makings of anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Several Conceptual Considerations
Culture
Culture can be defined from behaviorist and cognitive perspectives. Culture, from behavior perspective, can be defined as social group’ observable patterns of behavior, customs, and way of life (Harris, 1968, p. 16); and from cognitive perspective, culture is ideas, beliefs, and knowledge that characterize a particular group of people (Fetterman, 1989, p. 27). Having such a cultural concept will help ethnographers identify logic and cohesive patterns underlying ideas and behaviors of a group. This ability to describe what has been heard and seen within the framework of the social group’s view of reality is defined as a cultural interpretation (Geertz, 1973, p. 6).
Holistic Perspective
Ethnographers are interested in discovering the interrelationships among the various systems and subsystems in a community or program under study through contextualization. This orientation can be realized if they use a holistic view in describing as many aspects as possible about a certain culture or a social group. This description might include history, religion, politics, economy and environment. Such a description, of course, demands a great deal of time (Fetterman, 1989). However, if it can be done properly, it can be very rewarding both academically and professionally for the researcher.
Emic Perspective and Multiple Realities
In contrast to a priori assumptions about how systems work from a simple, linear, logical perspective, ethnographers typically take a phenomenology-oriented approach that tends to accept and recognize multiple realities. This is the consequence of understanding reality from inner or native perspective, from the point of view who experiences it. This emic perspective helps the ethnographers to understand why members of social group do what they do (Fetterman, 1989, pp. 30-31).
Etic Perspective
In contrast to the emic perspective, an etic perspective is the external, social scientific perspective on reality. Unlike in past days, most ethnographers nowadays “see emic and etic orientations as markers along a continuum of styles or different levels of analysis” (Fetterman, 1989, p. 31). Thus, good ethnography requires both emic and etic perspective as it requires an insightful and sensitive cultural interpretation combined with rigorous data collection techniques.
Why Ethnography?
Ethnography is a sound alternative of approaches when a researcher is interested in testing formal theories using grounded and empirical ways. Thus, ethnography can help to develop and discover a grounded theory by providing comprehensively cultural description. In addition, when understanding the complexity of societies is required, ethnography can facilitate scientifically empirical data and explanation to understand human behavior and ideas attached to their social activities (Spradley, 1980, pp. 15-16).
In terms of comprehensiveness, there are two kinds of ethnography, namely full scale and half-scale ethnography. Full-scale ethnography is very timing consuming and requires very comprehensive insight to the culture or people group under study. This seems not to be a wise choice for students working on their thesis or dissertation.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethnography
Each method and approach in research has its own relevance and context. No one method can address all issues and questions. Ethnography also has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
Ethnography has a focus on natural, ordinary events in natural settings, so that it can help us to have strong handle and understanding on what it is real that might be latent and non-obvious. It uses multiple data collection methods with all possible aspects of the culture or people under study over reasonably sustained period, so that it can reveal complexity beyond the snapshot of what and how many to how and why things happen. Furthermore, ethnography with the emphasis on people’s lived experiences is well suited for locating the meanings people place on the events, processes, and patterns of their lives (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 11).
Disadvantages
The most uncomfortable aspect of the ethnographic method is time consuming. Ideally, it should take at least six months to two years. Within this period, there are so many things might happen, from personal to professional issues that can put the study into end. It is also risky in terms of access to the group of people or organizations. It needs highly creative approaches to have enough access to the culture or group of people under study.
How Do We Do Ethnography?
Access
One of the most difficult steps in ethnography is gaining access to a social setting that is relevant to the research problem in which you are interested. The way in which access is approached differs along several dimensions, one of which is whether the setting is a relatively open one or a relatively closed one (Bell 1969). Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) make a similar distinction when they refer to ‘public’ setting as opposed to ones that are not public. Closed, non-public settings are likely to be organizations of various kinds, such as firms, schools, cults, social movements, and so on. The open/public setting is likely to be everything else-that is, research involving communities, gangs, drug users, and so on.
Based on this access-based division, Bryman (2004) mentions four forms of ethnography and samples of studies done using these forms:
First, overt role-open/public setting in which ethnographer or field worker enter open organization after telling the host organization about his or her identity as a researcher. Studies done using this form of role are study of intravenous drug users by A. Taylor (1993), study of a high-crime community by Foster (1995), study of working-class ‘lads’, and classic study of street corner life in a Boston slum area by Whyte (1955).
Second, overt role/closed setting in which ethnographer enters a closed setting organization, but he or she is able to reveal his or her identity as a researcher to the subject. Studies completed apply this access form are studies of a McDonald’s restaurant and an insurance firm by Leidner (1993), research in a UK accountancy firm by Coffey (1999), research on a Roman Catholic comprehensive school by Burgess (1983, 1987).
Third, covert role-open/public setting in which ethnographer enters an open organization or group setting without disclosing his or her identity, for example a study of a violent Glasgow gang by Patrick (1973).
Fourth, covert role-closed setting in which ethnographer has access to a closed organization or group setting without revealing his or her identity as a researcher. Studies performed using this access type are study of a police force in which he was already a policeman by Holdaway (1982, 1983), study of the National Front by Fielding (1981, 1982) and study of bouncers by Hobbs et al. (2003).
It is worth noting that public versus closed setting distinction is not a fixed one. Organizations that have a closed feature sometimes have a public character, such as the gatherings that are open for all members. This is also applied to the distinction made between overt and covert ethnography. When an ethnographer has access thorough overt route, there may be many people who come to in contact with the ethnographer without realizing that he or she is a fieldworker. In addition, most ethnographic studies done fall within type one or two. This reflects the fact that ethnographers are far more likely to take overt role than a covert role (Bryman, 2004) due to, perhaps, the ethics issues involved in the overt role are less problematic.
Overt versus convert ethnography
When an ethnographer comes to the field, he or she has choice to enter it overtly or covertly. This decision is often made based on the level of access difficulty and ethic consideration. In a certain condition, covert role must be taken to ease the access problem by not telling the group that one is a researcher.
Access to closed settings
As long as the research questions raised are relevant to the organization, access to it should not be a problem. However, it is very important to ask help from friends, contacts, colleagues and academics to have access easier. Those people can make difference when they are approached properly prior to the fieldwork. This indicates the importance of trying to get the support of someone within the organization who will act as sponsors or gatekeepers. Top managers or senior executives in an organization are among the most important agents to approach in order to get better access to an organization. Apart from an ability to provide clear explanation of one’s aims and methods, offering something in return, like report, can be trustworthy. Furthermore, preparedness to negotiate issues that might be concerned with the organization under study, including its people’s time, is necessary to have access (Bryman, 2004, p. 296).
Access to open/public settings
Gaining access to public settings has some problems similar to that of getting access to closed settings. So, access strategy becomes very important. Getting access via gatekeepers and sponsors are the most common practices among ethnographers. There is another technique of getting access; that is hanging around strategy (Bryman, 2004, p. 297).
Ongoing Access
After one succeeds to get access to the group, he or she still needs access to people. Gaining access to the group does not warrant that one will have an easy path through organization, especially in closed contexts, like organizations. People will have suspicions about him or her, perhaps seeing him or her as an instrument of top management. In order to solve this problem, one need to make sure that he or she has thought about ways in which people’s suspicions can be eased by being prepared for test of his or her competence, credibility and changes any time (Bryman, 2004, pp. 299-300).
Key Informants
It is necessary to have key informant in the field. Key informant becomes the principal information resources for the field workers. They are different from respondent. Almost everyone is be able to become a respondent for the ethnographer, but only limited number of group members that are suitable to be a key informant. Such a person must be knowledgeable about the community or group that is under study. Key informants often direct the ethnographers or fieldworkers to situations, events, or people likely to be helpful to the progress of the investigation. However, the ethnographer needs to look for other resources of information in order to avoid to be trapped into seeing social reality only through the eyes of the key informant (Bryman, 2004).
Roles for Ethnographers
Role of ethnographers is about how ethnographers locate themselves relative to the social setting and its members. This role can be classified based on the degree of their involvement and detachment from members of the society under study. (1) Complete participant: when an ethnographer becomes fully functioning member of the social setting and his or her identity is not known to members; (2) Participant-as-observer: when ethnographers takes full function in the social setting and members of the social setting are also aware of his or her status as a researcher; (3) Observer-as-participant: when the researcher is mainly an interviewer and has very little participation; and (4) Complete observer: The researcher does not interact with people so that people do not have to take the researcher into account. Such a role can be found in studies using forms of observation that are unobtrusive in nature (Bryman, 2004).
This classification should not be understood that each form stands itself exclusively because this actually reflects the degrees of involvement and detachment as well as it recognizes that actually ethnographers do not only use a single role throughout their dealings (Bryman, 2004). Complete observer role is argued not to be included as participant observation because it does not requires immersion in a social setting and prolonged involvement. However, others argue none of these forms is risk-free. Covert role, for example, can help ethnographers get rid of access problem because permission is not necessary, but it breaks two important ethical principles, namely it does not provide participants with the opportunity for informed consent and it allows deception. The observer-as-participant role carries the risk of not understanding the social setting and people in it sufficiently that can bring about the making of incorrect inferences. Both complete observer role and complete participation remove the more likely reactivity problem, but complete observer role carries even further risks than the observer-as-participant role; that is failing to understand situations.
Sampling
Sampling in ethnography is different from sampling in quantitative research design. Unlike quantitative research that has an aim to generate generalization, ethnography has a focus on developing empirical based theory generated from meanings underpinning social activities of people under study.
Ethnography often samples informants using a combination of convenience and snowballing sampling technique. Very often ethnographers face opposition or at least indifference to their research so that they often have to start to get information from whatever resources are available. But, whatever the sampling methods ethnographers employ, they have to ensure that they gain access to as wide a range of individuals relevant to the research questions as possible (Bryman, 2004).
An alternative strategy to sample is theoretical sampling. According to Glaser and Strauss (1967), theoretical sampling “is the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect next and where to find them, in order to develop his theory as it emerges”. Theoretical sampling is a defining property of grounded theory and is concerned with the refinement of ideas, rather than boosting sample size. In grounded theory, a researcher can carry on collecting data (observing, interviewing, collecting documents) until he or she has achieved theoretical saturation: after successive interviews or observations have both formed the basis for the creation of a category and confirmed its importance, there is no need to continue with data collection in relation to that category or cluster of categories. The researcher should move on and generate hypotheses out of the categories that are building up and then move on to collecting data in relation to these hypotheses. He or she samples in terms of what is relevant to and meaningful for his or her theory (Bryman, 2004). It is also important that ethnographic research sampling is not just about people but also other things. Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) mention time and context as units to be considered in the context of sampling. Attending to time means that the ethnographer must make sure that people or events are observed at different times of the day and different days of the week. It is also important to sample in terms of context. People’s behavior is influenced by contextual factors so that it is important to ensure that such behavior is observed in a variety of locations.
Field Notes
Ethnographers have to take notes based on their observations. These notes are recommended to specify key dimensions of whatever is observed and heard. In order to develop a good system of making field notes, there are some general principles to take into account: write down notes, however brief, as quickly as possible after hearing or seeing something interesting; write up full field notes at the very latest at the end of the day and include such details as locations, who is involved, what prompted that exchange or whatever, date, and time of the day, etc; when it is possible, use voice recorder to record initial notes, but this may create a problem of needing to transcribe a lot of speech; notes must be vivid and clear; you need to take copious notes, so, if in doubt, write it down.
The degree of research question clarity when ethnographers enter the field to some extent will guide strategies they use for taking notes. Most ethnographers start with a general research question and they will direct their focuses to some specific questions in the course of research process. Once this occurs, they have to orientate their observations to that research focus. However, this new direction must keep them open minded so that they do not lose the element of flexibility, one of the most important features and strength of the qualitative research.
The main equipment in the course of observation will be a note pad and pen. It is also possible to use voice recorder as well as camera as data collection equipments (Bryman, 2004). Currently, there is an increasing use of visual articles to be one of data resources.
Types of field notes
Some writers recommend that ethnographers classify the types of field notes generated in the process of conducting ethnography. Lofland & Lofland (1984) and Sanjek, 1990 suggest the following field note classification: (a) mental notes that are particularly useful when it is inappropriate to be seen taking notes; (b) jotted notes or scratch notes, i.e. very brief notes written down on pieces of paper or in small notebook to jog one’s memory about events that should be written up later; and (c) full field notes that are detailed notes which will be main data source made as soon as possible. These full notes should be written at the end of day or sooner if possible. In these notes, events, people, conversations and everything might be useful information is kept in the record. From here, the ethnographer can start doing preliminary analysis by putting initial ideas about interpretation and recording his or her impressions and feelings (Bryman, 2004).
How to End the Fieldwork
Leaving the field to end the fieldwork is not a clear cut process in ethnography due to its unstructured nature and absence of specific hypotheses to be tested other than those that might emerge during data collection and analysis. Ethnographers can close his or her ethnographical works because of various reasons, from occupational career, personal and family life to the end of research funding. Moreover, ethnographic research can be highly stressful for many reasons such as the nature of the topic places the fieldworker in stressful situations, the marginality of the researcher in the social setting and the need constantly to manage a front, and the prolonged absence from one’s normal life (Bryman, 2004). However, there is an ideal reason to leave the field work for ethnographers: the belief that enough data have been gathered to describe the culture or problem convincingly and to say something significant about it. This ethnographic saturation can be identified when the same specific pattern of behavior emerges over and over again and when the general picture reaffirms itself over and over again (Fetterman, 1989).
When an ethnographer leaving the field work, he or she must manage the process in a proper way. First, she or he must keep the promise, like if he or she promises a report to an organization as a condition of entry, that promise should not be forgotten. Second, he or she also must provide good explanations for his or her departure. Third, ethical commitments must not be forgotten, such as the need to ensure person and setting confidentiality unless there has been an argument that the nature of such a social setting can be disclosed.
Conclusion
Ethnography is only one of the available approaches that can be used to investigate certain social issues. Even though, it is originally developed within the anthropological realm of social sciences, it is actually employed by different areas of social sciences, such as sociology and education. It is really well suited for the study that is intended to provide answers on questions related to cultural issues in a comprehensive and holistic way within a natural setting.
References
Atkinson, P., Delamont, S., & Lofland, J. (2007). Handbook of ethnography. London: SAGE.
Becker, S., & Bryman, A. (2004). Understanding research for social policy and practice: themes, methods and approaches. UK: The Policy Press.
Brandriet, L. M. (1994). Gerontological nursing: application of ethnography and grounded theory. Journal of Gerontology, 34-40.
Bryman, A. (2004). Social research methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellen, R. F. (1984). Ethnographic research: a guide to general conduct. London: Academic Press .
Fetterman, D. M. (1989). Ethnography: Step by step. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. New York: Basic Books.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, L. A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. New York: Aldine Pub. Co.
Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (1995). Ethnography: principles in practice. London: Routledge.
Harris, M. (1968). The rise of anthropological theory. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.
Lofland, J., & Lofland, L. H. (1984). Analyzing social settings: a guide to qualitative observation and analysis. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Pub. Co.
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis. London: SAGE.
Sanjek, R. (1990). Fieldnotes: the makings of anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
11:45 AM
Theories of Social Class: Marx, Weber and Bourdieu
Unregarded Lives
This short article seeks to produce analytical comparisons among Marx, Weber and Bourdieu in the theory of social class. This will proceed with the following sequences. First, it begins by elaborating Marx’s concepts of the social class. Second, Weber’s ideas will be mentioned and explained corresponding to Marx’s in order to reveal their similarities and differences. Third, Bourdieu’s concepts will follow bearing in mind Marx’s and Weber’s. Finally, some analytical responses might occur intermittently throughout this article as an effort of the writer to communicate with ‘them’.
When Marx speaks about class, he is concerned with class struggle as the main, if not the only, resource of social change by which class becomes an analytical tool to comprehend social functions and changes. This class struggle incorporating three main elements (i.e. the means of production, relation of production and the product) is based on economic interest. This struggle, driven by economic interest to have control on the means of production, brings about conflict between the working class and the capitalist. Once the capitalist, the owner of the means of production, has succeeded to take control on the means of production, they automatically become the privileged class. They will use their economic-based class power to control their relations with others in order to support their political, social and cultural interests. Thus, relation to the means of production will not only determine one’s social class or social relation, but it also forms his/her values, norms and religion or social superstructure. In this context, people are designated to a certain social class based on the amount of ownership of means of productions they have regardless of their subjective realities, such as inherited status. Class is determined independently and objectively corresponding to the result of dialectic materialism through an antagonistic, conflictual and exploitative relationship of the human beings called class struggle reflecting an objective social selection. So, the ownership of means of productions is not intrinsically related to the issue of man-to-thing relation, but to the man-to-man relation. One can only determine his/her social relations to others based on the level of access he/she has to the means of production through labor division mechanism that gives rise to the class division.
Increasing exploitation of the dominant class or the capitalist on the proletariat through surplus value expropriation under a capitalistic system pushes the increase of gap between the owner of the means of production and the non-owner. When the two poles are extremely bipolarized, social condition arrives at a point where the working class as the exploited class develops a clear picture of class consciousness that has ability to produce class solidarity. At the same time, an effort to maintain class privilege emerges in the form of class exclusion. By then, the meaning of being in a working class become lived experiences and touches the essence of human beings as species-beings that should have reflected themselves on their own creations. Being exploited through the means of productions by their owners, they become alienated and slaved. These common and shared experiences they have move class struggle from the stage of class-in-itself to a new and powerful stage of class-for-itself. However, common and shared experiences are not enough to realize this transformation; class consciousness and organized political movement must exist in order to be able to make class as an agent of change. Within this bifurcated social system, the state plays an important role on the advantage of the capitalist. They work to protect the economic, political and cultural interests of this dominant capitalist class. This state-capitalist collaboration makes it more difficult for the working class to produce social transformation, especially with a state that is supported by military and has legitimate authority over people. However, Marx believes that in the course of time, stimulated by the working class condition created by the capitalistic system, this traditional class system will be replaced by a class free system or communism.
Even though Weber agrees with Marx that class is based on the economic interest and change happens through conflictual relationship, they have different concepts on social class. While Marx defines class inequality around the relation of production, Weber, on the other hand, in addition to the class dimension within economic order, adds two non-economic-based dimensions that contribute significantly to the class stratification: status group associated with social order and party or power associated with the political order. The three dimensions are not intrinsically reducible to one another, but they are related closely. Unlike Marx, Weber does not define class around the means and relations of productions only, but he takes it further to include market situation by which class situation is determined through competition. When people have causal common interests and the same chances of life, they are found in the same class situation. This class situation is essentially determined by the property and lack of property. The degree of one’s ability to buy or sells goods or services will increase or decrease his/her life chances. Then, further differentiation among the owners or the non-owners of property will occur based on the differences in the types of properties, skills and services one offers to the market. So, one’s market situation is determined not only by the amount, but also by the type and formation of ownership he/she has. In addition, even though Weber agrees with Marx’s notion of economic interest as an unambiguous factor creating class, he disagrees with Marx about the uniformity of class interest and the universality of collective actions. For Weber, Marx is wrong when he assumes that “the individual may be in error concerning his interests but that the ‘class’ is ‘infallible’ about its interests” (Weber, 2006, p. 42). Class interest, according to Weber, is not as simple as it might be thought as class situation emerges based on communalization that does not basically involve an action between members of an identical class, but it is an action between members of different classes (Weber, 2006). When every individual has his/her own unique situation of class, status and power, social bipolarization and communal actions become more difficult to be achieved. Furthermore, in order to be able to function within these multi resources of differentiation, a society needs legitimate power in the form of authority played by a political institution or state through rational-legal procedure. This kind of authority is held by those who have privileged class, status and power situations. Then, how Weber theorizes social change? Social change, according to him, can only happen when the three areas of stratification (i.e. class, status, and power) are closely correlated and an extreme gap between the owners and the non-owners of the property (i.e. goods, skills, and services) in these three areas simultaneously exists. Once this exists, social change preconditions, such as charismatic leadership and clearly articulated goals and ideologies, are more likely to be met. In this situation, the lower class is more likely to question the legitimate authority of the ruling class. This practice, when it is done collectively, cause class conflict that will lead to social change. This conflict, according to Weber, occurs in a cyclically dialectic process and will not end in communalism as Marx says.
One of the main dilemmas in sociology concerns human action (agency) and social structure. How far do human beings control their life conditions? Or is most of what they do the result of general social forces outside their control? In the context of Marx materialistic approach, how the “objectively structured aggregations of position holders” are transformed “into consciously acting collective agents”? Marxian solution of this problem leans to be utilitarian and cognitivistic by which the working class transcends its dominated status to collective consciousness utilizing its cognitive insight into their objective situation in the structure of social relations (Joppke, p. 56). Bourdieu offers a solution based on the dialectical principle ruling the relationship between the individual and the society, between the objective and subjective moments, between the field and the habitus. However, he calls both the objective and the subjective and the field and the habitus as structures. Thus, he eliminates the existing dualism of the agency and the structure which he describes as “everything is not equally possible or impossible” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242). Bourdieu explicates this concept by introducing the concept of habitus mediating between objective conditions (structure) and subjective perceptions (actors) to form the unity of class unconsciously (Joppke, 1986, p. 54). In other words, this habitus functions as a mediator to facilitate the indirect causal link between ‘positions in social space and practices’ (Weininger, 2005, p. 90). Structure of the social world, according to Bourdieu, is the real picture of the distribution of all types of capital that determines chances of life. Restricting all types of capital to a single form that is recognized by economic theory cannot account for the structure and function of the social world and prevent the constitution of a general science of the economy of practices as well (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242). Thus, Bourdieu develops three types of fundamental capital: economic capital, cultural capital and social capital. The last two are capable to be converted into economic capital through certain mechanisms, such as credentiality and nobility. This concept is similar to the Weber’s concept of status and power that can be supported by one’s class power and vice versa. However, Bourdieu objects the treatment of this contrast between class and status as two types of real unities because they always coexist in the same reality. Therefore, Bourdieu leans to treat this contrast as an analytical convenience. According to Weininger (2005), another reason behind this inclination is Bourdieu’s vision of social collective boundary as a fundamental form of politic conflict, and political and scientific interests cannot be amalgamated in sociology (p. 84). Bourdieu locates economic power, as Marx and Weber do, as the most important factor to determine class position, but Bourdieu introduces symbolic dimensions of the class struggle in the form of class boundaries that is continuously be produced and reproduced by the class members of the dominant class to maintain class distinction from the lower classes and within identical classes. This dialectic process will produce a habitus in a form of system that functions two ways: as a system whereby one organizes his/her own behavior and as a system through which one understands others. This process of functioning occurs in a linguistic market where a dialectic exchange operates in order to enable class replication. This linguistic market determines the price of the linguistic products offered by one’s habitus through its specific system of sanctions and censorship. Thus, each individual who brings his/her own habitus have recognized how much profit he/she can make in the market. This profit level is determined by one’s ability to survive a social change through symbolic relation and struggle utilizing his/her accumulated capital in the linguistic market.
Finally, Marx, Weber and Bourdieu have applied dialectic principle in their efforts to understand social structure and change. While Marx has a focus on the conflictual and exploitative dimension of social class, Weber has a focus on the competitive dimension of social class. Departing from both sociologists’ concepts, Bourdieu introduces new insight into social class by eliminating a rigid boundary between structure and agency through a mediating element called habitus. In addition, he introduces symbolic relations, in addition to Marx’s economic relation and Weber’s differential status to understand and analyze social class.
Reading Resources:
Allan, K. (2007). The social lens: An invitation to social and sociological theory. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Bourdieu, P. (2006). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 257-271.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York: Greenwood Press.
-----------------(2006). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 287-318.
Joppke, C. (1986). The cultural dimensions of class formation and class struggle: On the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 31, 53-78.
Koo’s Class Handouts.
Marx, K. (2006). Classes in Capitalism and pre-capitalism. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 21-35.
Parkin, F. (1974). Strategies of social closure in class formation. In Frank Parkin (Ed.), The social analysis of class structure. Tavistock Publications, 2-18.
Weber, M. (2006). Class, status, party. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 37-53.
Weininger, E. B. (2005). Foundations of Pierre Bourdieu’s class analysis. In Olin Wright (Ed.), Approaches to class analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 85-118.
When Marx speaks about class, he is concerned with class struggle as the main, if not the only, resource of social change by which class becomes an analytical tool to comprehend social functions and changes. This class struggle incorporating three main elements (i.e. the means of production, relation of production and the product) is based on economic interest. This struggle, driven by economic interest to have control on the means of production, brings about conflict between the working class and the capitalist. Once the capitalist, the owner of the means of production, has succeeded to take control on the means of production, they automatically become the privileged class. They will use their economic-based class power to control their relations with others in order to support their political, social and cultural interests. Thus, relation to the means of production will not only determine one’s social class or social relation, but it also forms his/her values, norms and religion or social superstructure. In this context, people are designated to a certain social class based on the amount of ownership of means of productions they have regardless of their subjective realities, such as inherited status. Class is determined independently and objectively corresponding to the result of dialectic materialism through an antagonistic, conflictual and exploitative relationship of the human beings called class struggle reflecting an objective social selection. So, the ownership of means of productions is not intrinsically related to the issue of man-to-thing relation, but to the man-to-man relation. One can only determine his/her social relations to others based on the level of access he/she has to the means of production through labor division mechanism that gives rise to the class division.
Increasing exploitation of the dominant class or the capitalist on the proletariat through surplus value expropriation under a capitalistic system pushes the increase of gap between the owner of the means of production and the non-owner. When the two poles are extremely bipolarized, social condition arrives at a point where the working class as the exploited class develops a clear picture of class consciousness that has ability to produce class solidarity. At the same time, an effort to maintain class privilege emerges in the form of class exclusion. By then, the meaning of being in a working class become lived experiences and touches the essence of human beings as species-beings that should have reflected themselves on their own creations. Being exploited through the means of productions by their owners, they become alienated and slaved. These common and shared experiences they have move class struggle from the stage of class-in-itself to a new and powerful stage of class-for-itself. However, common and shared experiences are not enough to realize this transformation; class consciousness and organized political movement must exist in order to be able to make class as an agent of change. Within this bifurcated social system, the state plays an important role on the advantage of the capitalist. They work to protect the economic, political and cultural interests of this dominant capitalist class. This state-capitalist collaboration makes it more difficult for the working class to produce social transformation, especially with a state that is supported by military and has legitimate authority over people. However, Marx believes that in the course of time, stimulated by the working class condition created by the capitalistic system, this traditional class system will be replaced by a class free system or communism.
Even though Weber agrees with Marx that class is based on the economic interest and change happens through conflictual relationship, they have different concepts on social class. While Marx defines class inequality around the relation of production, Weber, on the other hand, in addition to the class dimension within economic order, adds two non-economic-based dimensions that contribute significantly to the class stratification: status group associated with social order and party or power associated with the political order. The three dimensions are not intrinsically reducible to one another, but they are related closely. Unlike Marx, Weber does not define class around the means and relations of productions only, but he takes it further to include market situation by which class situation is determined through competition. When people have causal common interests and the same chances of life, they are found in the same class situation. This class situation is essentially determined by the property and lack of property. The degree of one’s ability to buy or sells goods or services will increase or decrease his/her life chances. Then, further differentiation among the owners or the non-owners of property will occur based on the differences in the types of properties, skills and services one offers to the market. So, one’s market situation is determined not only by the amount, but also by the type and formation of ownership he/she has. In addition, even though Weber agrees with Marx’s notion of economic interest as an unambiguous factor creating class, he disagrees with Marx about the uniformity of class interest and the universality of collective actions. For Weber, Marx is wrong when he assumes that “the individual may be in error concerning his interests but that the ‘class’ is ‘infallible’ about its interests” (Weber, 2006, p. 42). Class interest, according to Weber, is not as simple as it might be thought as class situation emerges based on communalization that does not basically involve an action between members of an identical class, but it is an action between members of different classes (Weber, 2006). When every individual has his/her own unique situation of class, status and power, social bipolarization and communal actions become more difficult to be achieved. Furthermore, in order to be able to function within these multi resources of differentiation, a society needs legitimate power in the form of authority played by a political institution or state through rational-legal procedure. This kind of authority is held by those who have privileged class, status and power situations. Then, how Weber theorizes social change? Social change, according to him, can only happen when the three areas of stratification (i.e. class, status, and power) are closely correlated and an extreme gap between the owners and the non-owners of the property (i.e. goods, skills, and services) in these three areas simultaneously exists. Once this exists, social change preconditions, such as charismatic leadership and clearly articulated goals and ideologies, are more likely to be met. In this situation, the lower class is more likely to question the legitimate authority of the ruling class. This practice, when it is done collectively, cause class conflict that will lead to social change. This conflict, according to Weber, occurs in a cyclically dialectic process and will not end in communalism as Marx says.
One of the main dilemmas in sociology concerns human action (agency) and social structure. How far do human beings control their life conditions? Or is most of what they do the result of general social forces outside their control? In the context of Marx materialistic approach, how the “objectively structured aggregations of position holders” are transformed “into consciously acting collective agents”? Marxian solution of this problem leans to be utilitarian and cognitivistic by which the working class transcends its dominated status to collective consciousness utilizing its cognitive insight into their objective situation in the structure of social relations (Joppke, p. 56). Bourdieu offers a solution based on the dialectical principle ruling the relationship between the individual and the society, between the objective and subjective moments, between the field and the habitus. However, he calls both the objective and the subjective and the field and the habitus as structures. Thus, he eliminates the existing dualism of the agency and the structure which he describes as “everything is not equally possible or impossible” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242). Bourdieu explicates this concept by introducing the concept of habitus mediating between objective conditions (structure) and subjective perceptions (actors) to form the unity of class unconsciously (Joppke, 1986, p. 54). In other words, this habitus functions as a mediator to facilitate the indirect causal link between ‘positions in social space and practices’ (Weininger, 2005, p. 90). Structure of the social world, according to Bourdieu, is the real picture of the distribution of all types of capital that determines chances of life. Restricting all types of capital to a single form that is recognized by economic theory cannot account for the structure and function of the social world and prevent the constitution of a general science of the economy of practices as well (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242). Thus, Bourdieu develops three types of fundamental capital: economic capital, cultural capital and social capital. The last two are capable to be converted into economic capital through certain mechanisms, such as credentiality and nobility. This concept is similar to the Weber’s concept of status and power that can be supported by one’s class power and vice versa. However, Bourdieu objects the treatment of this contrast between class and status as two types of real unities because they always coexist in the same reality. Therefore, Bourdieu leans to treat this contrast as an analytical convenience. According to Weininger (2005), another reason behind this inclination is Bourdieu’s vision of social collective boundary as a fundamental form of politic conflict, and political and scientific interests cannot be amalgamated in sociology (p. 84). Bourdieu locates economic power, as Marx and Weber do, as the most important factor to determine class position, but Bourdieu introduces symbolic dimensions of the class struggle in the form of class boundaries that is continuously be produced and reproduced by the class members of the dominant class to maintain class distinction from the lower classes and within identical classes. This dialectic process will produce a habitus in a form of system that functions two ways: as a system whereby one organizes his/her own behavior and as a system through which one understands others. This process of functioning occurs in a linguistic market where a dialectic exchange operates in order to enable class replication. This linguistic market determines the price of the linguistic products offered by one’s habitus through its specific system of sanctions and censorship. Thus, each individual who brings his/her own habitus have recognized how much profit he/she can make in the market. This profit level is determined by one’s ability to survive a social change through symbolic relation and struggle utilizing his/her accumulated capital in the linguistic market.
Finally, Marx, Weber and Bourdieu have applied dialectic principle in their efforts to understand social structure and change. While Marx has a focus on the conflictual and exploitative dimension of social class, Weber has a focus on the competitive dimension of social class. Departing from both sociologists’ concepts, Bourdieu introduces new insight into social class by eliminating a rigid boundary between structure and agency through a mediating element called habitus. In addition, he introduces symbolic relations, in addition to Marx’s economic relation and Weber’s differential status to understand and analyze social class.
Reading Resources:
Allan, K. (2007). The social lens: An invitation to social and sociological theory. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Bourdieu, P. (2006). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 257-271.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York: Greenwood Press.
-----------------(2006). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 287-318.
Joppke, C. (1986). The cultural dimensions of class formation and class struggle: On the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 31, 53-78.
Koo’s Class Handouts.
Marx, K. (2006). Classes in Capitalism and pre-capitalism. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 21-35.
Parkin, F. (1974). Strategies of social closure in class formation. In Frank Parkin (Ed.), The social analysis of class structure. Tavistock Publications, 2-18.
Weber, M. (2006). Class, status, party. In David B. Grusky and Szonya Szelenyi, Inequality: Classic readings in race, class, and gender, 37-53.
Weininger, E. B. (2005). Foundations of Pierre Bourdieu’s class analysis. In Olin Wright (Ed.), Approaches to class analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 85-118.
